Question #3: What is the Most Important Thing In Life?

It always happens when you make plans that things go wrong. Updating should continue without further glitches.

My old Polymate Jennifer asks,

“Write about what you feel is the one most important thing in life.”

My answer, “Truth” will be expected by many, probably, but the far more interesting question remains: “Why?”

Ever since I have been very young, I have always been almost obsessively concerned with how I knew something to be true. Naturally, the many adults in my life telling me one thing or another didn’t help this, but it became more problematic when the “wise men” of my childhood began to contradict each other. As I grew older, the issues at hand became increasingly more ‘important’ (the state of the country or morality instead of which cheese brand is the best to buy) and the answers became even more strongly disputed by those considering them. It was the most curious phenomenon to me that the answer given by any particular speaking was as full of sense and reasonableness as the next, though the next contradicted him completely! And really what developed in me was a gradual sort of open-mindedness that frustrated me to no end. I couldn’t make judgment calls because I could see both sides clearly, but I couldn’t act or get anything done because I couldn’t make a judgment call! It was even worse with the people I knew, with my uncle or my father or my teachers all speaking different ideas and all of them, curiously, conflicting.

I was about fifteen or sixteen when I realized that this idea of getting my information from other people could only go so far. Something along the lines of, “I’m smart, I can figure it out on my own!” must have occurred to me. That’s when I began the impossible task of reading everything, of meeting everything at the source, of experiencing everything, of being everything so that I could understand everything. Life turned into this massive data-gathering quest, and, almost immediately, I stumbled into philosophy. It started with a little clutch of paperbacks from a series that dad showed up with one day – whether it was because I had expressed some sort of slight interest or because I had a reputation for being interested in “smart things” I don’t know. Among them were Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religions, which was too advanced for me at the time; Nietzsche Birth of Tragedy, which didn’t interest me at the time; and this little volume called The Meditations by Descartes, which I picked up and, well, the rest was history.

The safety of beginning my lifelong philosophical inquiry with the meticulous doubting of Descartes is questionable, and I will attest that the idea that the world around me might not exist was a severe blow to my inexperienced mind, one which took me years to recover from. Kierkegaard noted that teaching men to think by first teaching them to doubt was like making them lie down in the mud to teach them how to stand up straight. Of course, unknowingly, I realized that I had always believed what Socrates taught, all along, that philosophy began in Wonder, and I think real life itself does too.

But the real question, which I think few have really gotten to the heart of, is that of which the Truth will discover. Too often I have seen many of the old philosophers, indeed, many who I have come to regard as good friends, become overtly preoccupied with the process of philosophy that they forget that philosophy is a means, and they forget the end. This mistake is precisely what I think people like Jann and Josh have criticized me of doing.

As usual, Kierkegaard says it nicely. “Philosophy always requires something more, requires the eternal, the true, in contrast to which even the fullest existence as such is but a happy moment.”

There are important truths to discover, those of Θεός (God) and αγάπη (love), but a discussion of these wanders outside of Jennifer’s quesetion.

In short, Truth is the most important thing to me, because by it, I discover all else; all that is dinstinctly True and important, Love and Life and God, all fall within the sphere. Without it, we have no starting point.

I leave you today, not with Kierkegaard, but with Karl Jaspers,

“The question of the value and meaning of existence is unlike any other question: Man does not seem to become really serious until he faces it.”

See you Friday, when we will either take a DBZ break from these weighty topics or else dive into them even further with a New Kind of Existentialism.

One Response

This is more personal question, it seems. Most people would have a different view of what the most important thing in life is. Surely, truth is at the back of most peoples mind, but then again, I’m not most people so I wouldn’t know. Truth is important, but I know people (cousins of mine) who lived most of their lives without having to question their existence. In fact, such discussions, to them, seem ridiculous and tedious, so there’s no use in trying to discuss such a fascinating subject with these people.
However, it is very difficult to determine if we see only shadows in a cave or are brains in vats. Personally, I don’t think the truth of this will ever be known. I believe, an acceptance of not knowing is almost required to even discuss the subject. Then again, those are just my personal beliefs.
To me, the one most important thing in life, would be passion. Without love for something (life, people, jobs, philosophy, music), I don’t see a life worth living.